Forming a Virtuous Elite: Book III of Plato’s Republic
The lesson of the poets at least shows continuity and discontinuity between Plato and Christian theology. As to agreement: Our views of divine nature shape our views of human nature. Since we are human, they shape us. As to disagreement: Socrates affirms the conclusion that fear of the underworld will make us cowards in the face of death.1 This is only a portion of the atheistic doctrine of Lucretius to come. This does not work even for Socrates given the sense of aporia about our knowledge of the afterlife in the prior dialogues. It begs the whole question: Is the afterlife so to be feared? One cannot determine (or eschew) the question for the practical effects of the contrary position.
Nevertheless, “we must constrain the poets either to deny that these are their deeds or that they are the children of gods.”2
We will beg Homer and the other poets not to be angry if we cancel those and all similar passages, not that they are not poetic and pleasing to most hearers, but because the more poetic they are the less are they suited to the ears of boys and men who are destined to be free and to be more afraid of slavery than of death.3
Imitation in tales must be minimal, lest guardians come to imagine themselves as beings lesser than their manly station.4 What is the connection here? In the first place, they had already agreed that “each one could practice well only one pursuit and not many.”5 Since this is primarily for the sake of the guardians, why should they be mimics at all, good or bad? Secondly, he makes a distinction between the kind of mimicking done in the writing versus that of actors, then moves to the imitation of the guardians, as the readers of the text or the audience of the play.6
The upshot is clear: “they should from childhood up imitate what is appropriate to them … but things unbecoming the free man they should neither do nor be clever at imitating … lest from the imitation they imbibe the reality.”7 For this reason, they may never imitate women, nor slaves, nor cowards, nor those of lower stations, nor animals nor any forces of nature.8
Think of how much more danger there is in modern imitation. Socrates says, “Then … the other kind of speaker, the more debased he is the less will he shrink from imitating anything and everything. He will think nothing unworthy of himself, so that he will attempt, seriously and in the presence of many, to imitate all things.”9 Socrates means this also to contrast the three kinds of poetry with pure imitation on one end and pure narration on the other. Still, considering the lower things he lists that are objects of their imitation, it recalls the modern actor, writer, and producer, who go far further in their perversity, exalting in their imitation the bad as good, the ugly as beautiful, and the violent as natural.
Likewise with soft tones in music.10 Plato dives deeper into music theory beginning at 399c, but the discerning reader will start to see the proper harmony of virtue with song to mirror the proper harmony of the soul. They realize that in order for such musicians and poets to be found, they must first know the “originals” first, like that which the reflection of letters in the water conform to. This becomes the first mention of the forms, and there must be some “discipline” by which we can know these.11
The body of the the third book is divided between music and gymnastics. These correspond to the training of the soul and the body, that the guardians of the city be well-rounded. The book ends by beginning to consider who “shall be the rulers and the ruled.”12
Ordering Loves
The song, he says, “is composed of three things, the words, the tune, and the rhythm.”13 Moreover, all that has been said about words in the prior forms must follow here; and “the music and the rhythm must follow the speech.”14 Some forms of music are more fitting and others unfitting. The “dirgelike modes,” being “the tense or higher” are “useless even to women who are to make the best of themselves.” This agrees with much that was said about women by Homer in the Odyssey. Some were stronger, but all, even Penelope, were incapacitated by lament. A second kind he calls “lax,” which are soft modes. We might think of these as contemplative in effect, yet he says that as “drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians … so is softness and sloth.”15 It would be a mistake to think that this leaves us only with battle anthems. He speaks of two modes corresponding to the two virtues of courage and temperance, for men engaged in war and peace, in matters of “the enforced and the voluntary.”16
As Socrates continues in “the purification,” he says of rhythm,
[We] must not pursue complexity nor great variety in the basic movements, but must observe what are the rhythms of a life that is orderly and brave, and after observing them require the foot and the air to conform to that kind of man’s speech and not the speech to the foot and the tune.17
As the man was to be over the woman, and both over the beast of the field, and, in the first fall, the silent man was ordered by the anxious woman, who in turn was ordered by the talking serpent, so it is here. In order to have reason govern the will, and so the appetite, the word of music must govern the airs, and so the foot. Music must train the whole person from the mind’s conformity to the ordered spheres down to that which was merely pleasant and sensuous.
“And gracelessness and evil rhythm and disharmony are akin to evil speaking and the evil temper, but the opposites are the symbols and the kin of the opposites, the sober and good disposition.”18 In all opposition to modern pedagogy, in which the youngest soul is fed a structure for later content, the ancient and classical education was persuaded to train the soul in just sentiments, or rightly ordered loves.
And is it not for this reason … that education in music is most sovereign, because more than anything else rhythm and harmony find their way to the inmost soul and take strongest hold upon it, bringing with them and imparting grace, if one is rightly trained, and otherwise the contrary? And further, because omissions and the failure of beauty in things badly made or grown would be most quickly perceived by one who was properly educated in music, and so, feeling distaste rightly, he would praise beautiful things and take delight in them and receive them into his soul to foster its growth and become himself beautiful and good. The ugly he would rightly disapprove of and hate while still young and yet unable to apprehend the reason, but when reason came the man thus nurtured would be the first to give her welcome, for by this affinity he would know her.19
Even of craftsman—think of the bedding, wallpaper, and other ornaments of an infant’s nursery—they resolve to keep watch and “forbid them to represent the evil disposition, the licentious, the illiberal, the graceless.”20 This could be compared to Neil Postman’s observation about the Second Commandment in the overall culture of ancient Israel—a God and a conception of Him “requiring the highest order of abstract thinking.”21 Compare as well to Calvin’s sections on idolatry in Book I of the Institutes, in which the fashioner of the marble begins in the mind, so that the chisel follows the hand, which follows that invisible secret defection.22 Yet the first false teacher was external and drew down the soul to the fractured and the flattened, away from the one and transcendent. In all of this it is assumed that “the end and consummation of culture is the love of the beautiful.”23
Making Strong
After examining the importance of poets and musicians and even craftsmen that give shape to our material surroundings—that all of these must communicate the good, the true, and the beautiful—it occurs to them that these masters must first be produced themselves.
Then, by heaven, am I not right in saying that by the same token we shall never be true musicians, either—neither we nor the guardians that we have undertaken to educate—until we are able to recognize the forms of soberness, courage, liberality, and high-mindedness, and all their kindred and their opposites, too, in all the combinations that contain and convey them, and to apprehend them and their images wherever found, disregarding them neither in trifles nor in great things, but believing the knowledge of them to belong to the same art and discipline?24
There can be no new elite otherwise. All must be specialized, but each must be generalized under philosophy. The Christian would place theology in the supreme role, with philosophy most general as servant. One infamous marker of the difference between the pagan and the Christian handling of life comes with what cream will not rise to the top.
Then will you not establish by law in your city such an art of medicine as we have described in conjunction with this kind of justice? And these arts will care for the bodies and souls of such of your citizens as are truly wellborn, but those who are not, such as are defective in body, they will suffer to die, and those who are evil-natured and incurable in soul they will themselves be put to death.25
One might first ask his exact meaning: Is this proactive death, e.g., abortion and euthenasia? Or, is it mere priority to the virtuous and useful, allowing others to wither on the vine, so to speak? In any event, it is monstrous. A thriving society would have both the material resources and the strength of character in the strong to find a place for all of the weak, as the ethics the Apostles handed down to the church make plain:
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong (1 Cor. 1:27).
We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak (Rom. 15:1).
Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness (Gal. 6:1).
In Christianity, God does indeed give strength, so that its maximization is a virtue; yet one is shown to be the genuine article by having strength to spare, to help those who are cast down.
“After music our youth are to be educated by gymnastics,” but what does this mean? There are some hints that this is primarily to keep the body under control precisely that it would not control the mind. Bearing in mind that such exercise is for war, much of this will be mind over matter. How do these two aspects of making men relate?
In the first place, they were designed in harmony, yet the order mattered. One was for the soul (music) and the other for the body (gymnastics), yet the latter should be to serve the former. Short of that, “the devotees of unmitigated gymnastics turn out more brutal than they should be and those of music softer than is good for them.”26 Thus when unified in method, the soul becomes sober and brave; taken to one or the other extremes, either rude or cowardly.
How are these identified? Generally speaking, “the rulers must be their best.”27 But what constitutes this “best”? “They must then to begin with be intelligent in such matters and capable, and furthermore careful of the interests of the state … But one would most likely to be careful of that which he loved.” This is a perfect example of what was said earlier about an education in the forms. Each of these cries out for a standard of measurement. Intelligence is not enough. All of that early training was for correct loves; and “one would most likely to love that whose interests he supposed to coincide with his own.”28 How is this tested? How do we guarantee that such a one will maintain that love or conviction the whole way through to power? He can be monitored for proper convictions while he grows.
Socrates uses the word “expel” to describe what either was or seemed to be the right convictions. Then, “the exit of a belief from the mind is either voluntary or involuntary. Voluntary is the departure of the false belief from one who learns better, involuntary that of every true belief.”29 The latter is what tripped up the two brothers speaking with Socrates.
What is this voluntary and involuntary “exit” of belief? “[Don’t] you agree with me in thinking that men are unwillingly deprived of good things but willingly of evil? Or is it not an evil to be deceived in respect of the truth and a good to possess truth?30
Socrates resorts to a tale to make his point:
While all of you in the city are brothers, we will say in our tale, yet God in fashioning those of you who are fitted to hold rule mingled gold in their generation, for which reason they are the most precious—but in the helpers silver, and iron and brass in the farmers and other craftsmen. And as you are all akin, though for the most part you will breed after your kinds, it may sometimes happen that a golden father would beget a silver son and that a golden offspring would come from a silver sire … So that the first and chief injunction that the god lays upon the rulers is that of nothing else are they to be such careful guardians and so intently observant as of the intermixing of these metals in the souls of their offspring, and if sons are born to them with an infusion of brass or iron they shall by no means give way to pity in their treatment of them, but shall assign to each the status due to his nature and thrust them out among the artisans or the farmers.31
In order for the guardians to not turn into savage masters: “In the first place, none must possess any private property save the indispensable. Secondly, none must have any habitation or treasure house which is not open for all to enter at will. Their food, in such quantities as are needful for athletes of war sober and brave, they must receive as an agreed stipend from the other citizens as the wages of their guardianship, so measured that there shall be neither superfluity at the end of the year nor any lack.”32
With this, the reader who skims only to recruit Plato as a source for their modern ideology is settled. Here is Plato’s social engineering, whether as a fascist for so sifting through culture, or as a communist for abolishing private property and voluntary social stratification.
The more balanced soul who reads will recall the necessity for waiting. One must discipline the mind and wait for Socrates to fill out his analogy of soul to city, which, if we remember, was his method to see with the mind’s eye the form of justice.
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1. Republic, III:386b
2. Republic, III:391d
3. Republic, III:387b
4. Republic, III:395d-396e
5. Republic, III:394e
6. Republic, III:395b-c
7. Republic, III:395c
8. Republic, III:395d-396b
9. Republic, III:397a-b
10. Republic, III:398e-399c
11. Republic, III:402b-c
12. Republic, III:412b
13. Republic, III:398c
14. Republic, III:398d
15. Republic, III:398e
16. Republic, III:399b-c
17. Republic, III:399e-400a
18. Republic, III:401a
19. Republic, III:401d-402a
20. Republic, III:401b
21. Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1986), 9.
22. Calvin, Institutes, I.10.1; I.11.5, 8, 9.
23. Republic, III:403c
24. Republic, III:403c
25. Republic, III:409e-410a
26. Republic, III:410d
27. Republic, III:412c
28. Republic, III:412d
29. Republic, III:412e-413a
30. Republic, III:413a
31. Republic, III:415b-c
32. Republic, III:416d-e
